Another damned blog.

"No one's heard a single word I've said
they don't sound as good outside my head"

--Nine Inch Nails

This one posted by John Shirley on 11-9-08

A Quick, Splashy review of MILK

This very good movie, MILK, about the epochally important gay-rights activist and San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, murdered by the troubled Dan White, was NOT written by Gus Van Sant, the director, which is part of why it's a good movie. Most of the films he wrote himself aren't very good. I liked Drugstore Cowboy though. Anyway, Sean Penn will get an Academy Award for this, politics will help but there couldn't be a better performance, you totally forget it's Sean Penn, he completely disappears into it. Totally. And the actor is not gay. It's amazing. 

BTW the film does not make Dan White seem like a homophobe, as some have claimed. It does imply that he may have been an in the closet gay. The film suggests though that essentially he killed Milk and Moscone out of a lunatic obsession on betrayal and humiliation, nothing to do with homophobia.
 
This is a very touching and a very engrossing film, I didn't know how tough it was for gays even as late as the 1970s/80s, and it's a real insight into the political activist process. This is an important lesson on what one man can accomplish--yes he had lots of help but much of it wouldn't have happened without his dogged persistence. 
 
Best thing Gus VS will ever do I betcha. 
 
It's a hard movie to look away from. Very important film. They should show it in schools. Maybe with a few *little* cuts if the students are under 18. 
 
Really well cut together, this film, too. Smooth as silk.

veReview of CITY OF EMBER

This PG film is, yes, a sciencefiction allegory but also, pre eminently, a STEAMPUNK allegory. Haven't seen anything so 'steampunk' in a long time. 

City of Ember is a good movie, well directed, ingeniously realized, intelligently acted, about a post holocaust society that has lived in an underground city for two hundred years...and the young people trying to find a way out of the crumbling city to the upper world. Bill Murray as the corrupt mayor. This may remind some people of a Star Trek episode and THX 1138, and that's true, but it's is a very distinctive story to itself and really quite original enough.

It's almost a fantasy the way it's done, with little explanation of, well, all kinds of things, but it works great. The "Builders" who planned for the people to exit after a certain time seem to have used Walt Disney's Imagineers to plan the means of exit, strangely enough. That 'way out' is pretty Disneyland E Ticket ride. (Okay that E ticket thing is an outdated reference as Disneyland doesn't do tickets for rides per se now). Anyway, this movie has its (very nicely done) scary monsters, and good suspense, and cool images.

What's the allegory? You can make political sense of it--basically, the conservatives keep us underground (but a conservative would interpret it 'don't trust government' perhaps). But to me the real meaning is, if you have intelligent young people, trust their instincts over the stodgy old phucks. Trust the renewing power, the vision, of youth. And appropriately enough, in light of that theme, City of Ember is a good movie to take kids or young people to. It'll stimulate their minds--and stimulate them to boldness.

They should have used Bill Murray more in this picture...

ENVISIONING A SIMPLE TECH SOLUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING

Various technological solutions have been put forth to deal with the global warming emergency--one that seems to me especially dangerous is the notion of putting billions of tons of tiny little reflective particals in the atmosphere. Using pollution to reflect sunlight back into space. Pollution to deal with a pollution problem? I don't think so. And I figure I can't do any worse than that idea...So...

Here's my notion: I envision a gigantic engineering project, carried out in thousands of sites around the world, in which we'd create a series of cooling towers in the hottest areas, each tower about two miles high--has to be high enough to get into a consistently cooler layer of the atmosphere so the heat is drawn up to this area, and dispersed spaceward. Ideally the towers would be even higher than two miles. They would be made of materials that are sound for high structures while also good at conducting heat. The heat that is not radiated into space is then routed to a liquid in a circular, enclosing pipe around the tower, exciting the liquid so it doesnt quite steam but expands, exerting pressure that is converted to kinetic energy, so the heat is dispersed in two ways, both up and down--the downward kinetic energy is used to make clean electric power.

Construction of the giant cooling towers would be a group project of industrialized nations, the ones responsible for the mess, employing the otherwise unemployed, giving them training and paychecks. It'd be a crash program, which the world would try to finish in ten years time from the first day of construction. It'd be a planetary effort and there would be probably two or three thousand of these towers at the finish. 

I know, it's all generalities. I'll leave specifics to an engineer. Computer models might tell us if it'll work.

Meanwhile we cut down on greenhouse gases--the real solution over the long term-- and look forward to the day the towers eventually, generations from now, become obsolete.

 PALIN PROBLEMS PRESSED INTO A PACKED PARAGRAPH

Sarah Palin believes in Creationism , which means she employs selective intelligence (she's not innately stupid, she's an intelligent woman) which is scary in itself. She recently said we may have to go to war against the Russians and if McCain's elected she's a heartbeat closer to being President and being in a position to make that war happen, which seems likely considering her history of being an Armageddon-happy dominionist. She's anti-environmental and the consequences of our being lousy environmental stewards will already last for many generations so here's someone prone to making a bad problem worse. She's ignorant about foreign affairs which is dangerous, like a small child thinking she can play with matches in a fireworks warehouse. And she generates egregious distortions about her political history which means we can trust her even less than most politicians.

My garden is almost silent.

This time of year, there would be legions of buzzing bees all over it. They've been missing in action all spring and summer. Honeybees are dying out, thanks to “colony collapse disorder“. And it's showing around here. Taking a walk I pass enormous flowered bushes and trees, that used to be dynamos of humming bees anytime they were in flower. The buzzing was loud, the bees vital and busy and countless. Now there are few...or none. Which means far fewer pollinators--which might, in turn, mean far fewer flowers next year.

It was recently revealed that a major cause of colony collapse disorder may be a particular pesticide, one that kills bees or makes them vulnerable to parasites. The pesticide (see below) may be a piece of the puzzle, one vital factor in the equation of colony collapse, along with viruses and mites. It may be a kind of chemical AIDS for bees.

And soon after this it was revealed that Bush's EPA, run by the biased-for-business appointees he recommended, concealed vital information about the dangers of this pesticide...

So if this spring is almost flowerless because of lack of pollinators, it may well be the fault of George W Bush, his chemicals industry cronies...and his irresponsible puppets at the EPA.

Here's the latest:

Germans probing whether Bayer pesticide caused honeybee colony collapse

By Sabine Vollmer, Raleigh News & Observer Tue Aug 26, 2:28 PM ET

RALEIGH, N.C. — Bayer CropScience is facing scrutiny because of the effect one of its best-selling pesticides has had on honeybees. A German prosecutor is investigating Werner Wenning , Bayer's chairman, and Friedrich Berschauer , the head of Bayer CropScience , after critics alleged that they knowingly polluted the environment.  The investigation was triggered by an Aug. 13 complaint filed by German beekeepers and consumer protection advocates, a Coalition against Bayer Dangers spokesman, Philipp Mimkes, said Monday.

The complaint is part of efforts by groups on both sides of the Atlantic to determine how much Bayer CropScience knows about the part that clothianidin may have played in the death of millions of honeybees. ...Clothianidin and related pesticides generated about $1 billion of Bayer CropScience's $8.6 billion in global sales last year. The coalition is demanding that the company withdraw all of the pesticides.

"We're suspecting that Bayer submitted flawed studies to play down the risks of pesticide residues in treated plants," said Harro Schultze , the coalition's attorney.  "Bayer's ... management has to be called to account, since the risks ... have now been known for more than 10 years." ...On the other side of the Atlantic, the Natural Resources Defense Council is pressing for research information on clothianidin.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the pesticide in 2003 under the condition that Bayer submit additional data. A lawsuit, which the environmental group filed Aug. 19 in federal court in Washington , accuses the EPA of hiding the honeybee data.

It's very simple--the will of the people makes itself known in congress. And we make REALLY TOUGH LAWS on pollution. And they give fairly little time to turn things around, to polluters and car manufacturers.

And listen to the howls of outrage!
But say you make a law, industry must cut pollution by 95% in eight years. Car manufacturers too. Electrical generation plants too.

Suppose you had the will to enforce it. You start arresting people who don't start working on it, in, say, SIX MONTHS.

They'd cry out, "Can't be done! Haven't the money, haven't the resources! It'd take a miracle!"

More arrests. And then...

Suddenly...it'd get done. "Miraculously", the technology would be "found" to scrub, to make efficient, to use alternate sources, etc. They would say, "Oh wait, we just figured this out."

Motivated to do it, they'd do it. It would be like a miracle.

And it's not just to stop global warming. It's to stop mercury pollution of the seas (from air pollution), it's to curtail emphysema and lung cancer and acid rain. It's to clean up the air. It's to change our basic, most fundamental point of view on how we relate to our world.

 What I'm talking about is so strict--I mean, we need to be major-crime-prosecution strict...and that's so strict it would be “draconian“. But it's needed.

Libertarians would probably call it a fascist or autocratic ruling. And it almost is. But it's like there's a drunk in your crowded lifeboat, in an ice and treacherous sea, and the drunk is jumping up and down. You have to knock him on the head to save the rest of the people in the lifeboat.

"You change your technology NOW or you go to jail indefinitely".

How would you implement something that harsh, that strict? Be recognizing that literally the fate of billions of people is involved; that catastrophe is the consequence of NOT doing it.

The thing is, if we MADE them--they would "miraculously" do it. I'm using the term miraculous sarcastically.And it'll happen too--after the world is even more egregiously toxified, after the worst effects of global warming, in like 45 years, you'll see laws like this. But it'll take the starvation deaths of a billion or so people; it'll take the displacement of a large segment of the Earth from their homes...

Then ... only THEN...we'll legislate for miracles.

REAGANITES AND LIBERTARIANS: THE SIMPLE THING THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND

 Reaganite Republicans and libertarians share the same illusion--that government is "them" not US. If you asked them if that's the case some would deny it, I suspect--it's a blind spot. They often don't even know they feel that way. (Some admit it, would gleefully say, "Hell yeah it's them and not me!" But they're wrong about that.) A lot of their feeling against "big" government is an emotional response to "intrusiveness"...and to taxation. It is to some extent, perhaps, raw taxation resentment. But resentment is not thinking. In fact, resentment cannot think.

Reaganite Republicans and libertarians seem to view government as something over there, that's intruding here.

They also suffer from a corollary illusion: that government is not significantly qualitatively shaded.

But in America, government doesn't have to be "over there"; it doesn't have to be Them. And it has a wide spectrum of potential qualitative shading.

"Big" American government--that is, government intended to be effective, helpful government--can be wasteful, mindlessly bureaucratic, intrusive, time wasting, overtaxing, war mongering, polluting, and corrupt.

Another "big" American government-- with social safety nets, help for the mentally ill, social security, unemployment insurance, national health care, a reasonable (neither too big or too small) military, an effective FEMA, effective federal law enforcement and enforcement of civil rights, an effective FDA and EPA--can be modulated to be minimally wasteful, only as bureaucratic as need be, minimally intrusive, reasonably efficient, fair with taxes, non polluting and not beholden to special interests. If it's efficient, it's not big. It's the right size. It can be efficient, if we monitor it, and make intelligent rules for it.

The qualitative scale can shift, and "big" government (it should be no bigger than needed--and it needs to be fairly large-scale without being topheavy) can include all those good qualities, if we require it.

The bottom line is, it's not *them* - an effective, regulatory but freedom-preserving government can be US. Can be you and me, can be cultivated by us to be pruned and encouraged as much as an educated public feels it needs to be.

A real government is about *service*--and it is an expression of the will of the people. It *is* the people. So when we trim it too much, trim it mindlessly--we're trimming away our own limbs, our roots, and our possibilities for growth.

She said the dog had been all its life in the lab, had never seen the sun, till she'd adopted it; had never seen grass. She said that it had stayed in its crate, at first, when she'd brought it home; had cowered in there, afraid to come out.

She said that for a long time it woke at 3 45 in the morning, every day, because that was when the men in the white coats had come to give it injections...or whatever they'd done to it. The labs won't say. She showed me the numbers --many numbers, presumably for many dogs--tattooed inside its right ear.

And she said that many adopted-out dogs from labs die within six months, perhaps from tumors they've been given in the experiments, or from other lab-induced damage. But some of them live on, and live happily. Though afraid of men, this dog had grown, and learned to enjoy itself. It chased around a bit, and it looked lovingly up at the woman who'd rescued it.

There has to be a better way. There are alternatives to animal testing...Let's use them, for god's sake. For our own sake--so that we can grow as people. So we can come out of our emotional cages. Let's find a better way.

Read about ALTERNATIVES HERE.

SOMEONE ASKED ME TO EXPLAIN WHY I'M VOTING DEMOCRAT

Policy. That's why I vote Democrat even though I think they're blighted by special interests., They are NOT the same as the GOP as some charge.

In *general* Democrats have an overall policy set that I think is wiser among the choices given me. In general, a willingness to balance market interests with the good of the consumer, the environment, the people as a whole; a smaller possibility of involvement in war, on the whole, especially in the current political environment. Willingness to regulate industry and so act as a check on its excesses, without nationalizing or otherwise smothering industry. A balance between encouraging free enterprise and modulating the rules of free enterprise to create a level playing field and a sense of responsibility. A willingness to offer benefits to taxpayers like access to publically funded health services--this is at least possible with the Democrats even if it's not in place now--for those who have no other recourse. A greater likelihood that civil rights for women, racial minorities, and gays will be implemented and enforced than the other parties offer (if libertarians had been in charge of the country till now, since they're antiregulatory and against federal interference. there would have been no civil rights laws, no federal enforcement of civil rights, and there would still be segregation in the USA). More emphasis on the separation of church and state; less likelihood of gravitating to a theocracy. More emphasis on education and less on developing weapons (not that there'd be no weapons development, but less money would go to such things than now; more money would go to education.) Along those lines.

There's PLENTY I can criticize the Democrats for, especially around succumbing to campaign financing interests. But the general trend is as I've described and they are the lesser of evils given the choices. In fact--Barack Obama is better than the lesser of evils. He'll be a good leader.

WHAT THE TRAGEDIES IN CHINA AND MYANMAR REVEAL...ABOUT HUMANITY'S FUTURE

These two disasters, coming so close together, not so long after events like the Hurricane Katrina Disaster on the Gulf Coast, reveal a ticking truth that has been hidden, like a bomb in gift wrapping, all along...

Human civilization is fragile.  It is not as cohesive as a construct of tinkertoys--it is actually an enormous house of cards. There are a series of houses of cards, let's say, on a giant card table. There is a little space between some of them; others are more interconnected. Someone slaps the card table in one spot and one house of cards falls, then another. Bits fall off another one but it doesn't quite crumble. But a good swift kick to the card table and they all come down.

Those who delight in houses of cards, or castles of sand, are aware that they're momentary amusements. They don't expect them to last. It's okay that they're designed to be temporary. Short term satisfaction is the goal. But we've made the mistake of constructing civilization the same way--for the sake of short term satisfactions. Mostly, for profits.The destruction in China and Myanmar is a result of natural forces working with an internal domino effect, bad building, bad planning for emergencies, one thing collapsing onto another, leading to another collapse--that has happened internally in China and Myanmar. But all civilization is now interconnected, and it can happen globally.

We've forgotten to think in the long term. We've forgotten to think about the consequences of poisoning the environment--global warming is just one consequence. The spread of neurotoxins and toxins inducing hormonal disruptions, throughout the human and animal world, has only just started to show its bad effects. We never got around to thinking about the consequences of  dumping billions of tons of plastic into the ocean, or the social effects of failing to feed and educate billions of hungry people.

Now we're told that global warming will cause a destructive chain reaction in agriculture--mass famine will result, across the planet. We're told that drinkable water will be in short supply. That these factors will drive hundreds of millions of people to becoming refugees--angry refugees. That their leaders, some of whom have, or will have, the nuclear bomb, will become desperate to keep order...and will use war as a stupid solution to try to get what they need.

The destruction still unfolding in China and Myanmar is just the beginning there--and the consequences of our failure to think about the long term effects of our action are just beginning to show themselves, globally. Doubtless, before it's over, we'll see all the houses of cards collapse, on the card table. We'll see civilization collapse. Perhaps helped along by other ill timed natural disasters. That's what the disasters in China and Myanmar reveal--the fragility, and doom, of our civilization

##Old age is right and proper, however dismaying it may seem as we age. What use is a candle that is not lit? It merely takes up space. When it is lit, it gives light, but it also melts. A candle that gives light but does not also melt away is either an abomination of nature, or a miracle. If it's a miracle then it is not in our province to construct it.

 ##Conditions have weight. Behavior has momentum.

 #There's a misunderstanding that the right-hand-path in spirituality, to use a short hand term, is about abasing or losing yourself or demolishing yourself. Not true at all. It's simply about being in right relationship to the divine source of consciousness, and the Bodhisatvas who try to mitigate, and eventually end, the world's suffering. But it's not self annihilation. It's more like a reshuffling of the inner person so that the ego takes its rightful place, as just one more part of the inner machinery. It's like taking the keys away from a drunk driver.

 ##Machines that pollute are only half invented.

 ##Music temporarily changes our relationship to time; it reconciles us with time's disintegration of form.

 ##Have you ever seen mentally handicapped people dancing? That's us, all of us, and the music we're dancing to is life itself; is our lives, individually and collectively. Mentally handicapped people generally dance badly, but they learn, they keep trying, and they improve. Eventually they can dance pretty well to the music. But there's always a place for improvement. You can always be more congruent with life. I think that the universe is front-loaded to create life just the way it's front loaded to produce gravity or suns or atomic motion. But I don't see a creator being necessary. It's just that in this (one of many?) universe the probability of life is built into the structure of things just as the structure of things is built into the structure of things. How did the strong/weak forces come about?

   They're in the nature of materials at hand at the big bang; the probability (not inevitability) of life is presumably in some wise also simply in the nature of matter. There is no need to assume that life requires a supernatural spark and therefore there's no need to assume that it arises purely by chance per se--if  things are innately organized to produce it, *just because they are*, that is no more supernatural than that things are innately organized to produce gravity.

   It's not intelligent design--because it's not design. Life is not designed in; it's just likely due to some only barely (so far) intuited immanent structuring of matter and energy.

My Ongoing Disagreement with Libertarians comes down to This...

They say to me, “In the end it comes down to this, is more government a problem or a solution?“ And they say to me, “You worry Libertarians would leave the world open to be taken over by Corporations? What makes you think Corporations haven't taken over already?“

My response is:

Why I Am NOT a Ron Paul Libertarian (Or a Reaganite, or a Bushite, or any other sort of Libertarian)
A friend posted “Why I am a Ron Paul Libertarian“ on the John Shirley message board with a link to the Lew Rockwell site which quotes Jefferson on the best government being the least government. This was my response:

The government which governs best governs least” is a Jeffersonian principle.

When Jefferson was Secretary of State and then President, the USA was small, the civilized world fairly small, industry was almost non existent; the East India company was around but there were few really big powerful companies and they were mostly far reduced in their capability to do harm to the world (though their part in colonialism was pretty exploitive to say the least.) The population of the USA was small. The population of the world was small relative to the size of the globe.

Now there are 6 billion people going on 10 billion, within 40 years, there are several hundred million in the USA. There is a slough of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas. The seas are overfished and getting towards empty, and they are acidifying--and they are rising. Gigantic corporations controlled by a handful of wealthy individuals create a merchant's despotism. Countless cars drive on countless miles of road; millions of people have guns. Nuclear weapons are proliferating. Mass murder is not uncommon. Millions of people addicted to serious drugs (including pharmaceuticals) are all around us. Weapons of mass destruction are stockpiled. The Clean Air and Clean Water acts were beginning to clean up the air and water until Reaganism (ie libertarianism) and Bushism (ie libertarianism in terms of much economic policy)weakened them--now we're struggling with pollution again, pollution Jefferson could not have envisioned. Diseases pass easily from one part of the world to another because of modern travel and population density. The health situation is utterly different now--in Jefferson's time medicine was negligible. Now we have really great medical possibilities--for those who can obtain them. (In a libertarian society, only the rich will access them.) And privatization of public works, when it has been tried, has been a repeated failure.

It is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SITUATION than it was in Jefferson's time. We're like (and becoming ever more like) thirty people crowded in a lifeboat built for twelve. The small amount of food in the lifeboat has been appropriated by a couple of rich guys who brought along their bodyguards. They're thinking of throwing people overboard.

Time for libertarians to grow up.

In the real world of billions of people, high technology, vast crime (even apart from drugs), major pollution, the new pharmaceuticals, today's health care challenges, and multinationals, we need an involved, reasonably strong (but not despotic) central government, with extensive regulatory powers.

And here are MY links.

An entertainingly satirical piece:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,88788,00.html

One example out of many of deregulation NOT working:

http://www.commondreams.org/views/082700-101.htm

A being in the shape of an ordinary man in a nice Italian suit, with a blazing sun for a head entered a room in a higher dimension, the room created just for this purpose. This was God, in an appearance chosen for the occasion. Entering from another door–rising up from a trap door in the floor–was Lucifer, a winged, naked angel, very beautiful, except for the nails driven through his eyes, which streamed blood.

A poker table appeared, with green felt, and a deck of cards.

“Thanks for the game,” Lucifer said, sitting. “I’m caught up in that whole Hold ‘Em Poker craze. I’m a big fan of Doyle Brunson. He’s old school.”

“Okay if Justice Herself deals?” God asked, sitting in the chair opposite the devil.

“Who else could I trust?”

They played head’s-up no-limit Poker. The stakes were all the money that would ever be–which God had–versus all the money that ever was–which Satan had. Finally God won everything, with a better full house than the devil’s. It was one of those terrible suck-outs. The devil had AK and there were two kings on the board (which was KKA2J). But God had AA and there was an ace up there too. So God’s AAAKK beat the devil’s KKKAA. “That’s sick,” God said. “Sorry about that.”

“Tell you what,” the devil said. “I’ll bet you the whole world against all your winnings. I currently control the Earth, pretty much, after all. Most of it. One hand for the world.”

“Ohhhhhhh…okay,” God said. “You’re on.”

The devil got a full house again but this time his hole cards were 66 and the board showed QQ336.

God folded when the devil showed. “Full house! You got me beat, Lucifer. The Earth is yours.”

What? You’re not going to show me your hand?”

“Hm? No, no, I folded. You got it. Your planet. I’m relieved. I’m pulling all my people out. You can do what you want with it. Rains of fire, whatever. Later, man. I got to go. Starting over in the Andromeda galaxy.”

God vanished. Lucifer checked God’s cards. God’s hole cards were two queens. God’d had quads. Four of a kind. He’d have won if he hadn’t folded.

“Damn it, God! You stuck me with the Earth on purpose!” Lucifer shouted.

“Sorry,” God said, just a voice from the air now. “But I gave them free will and they totally loused up the planet. It’s polluted, chock full of nuclear weapons, terrorists, and mostly run by greedheads. They’re destroying all the wildlife, they’re poisoning the seas, and they’re cooking the whole world in greenhouse gases. They permit slavery, they thrive on sweatshops, they allow millions of their own kind to starve every year, and they burn out their creative energies on videogames and the like. You can have them, man. All yours. I’m quitting in disgust. And my folding those cards–that’s within the rules, pal. Ask Justice. Got to go. Won’t be asking you to my new place. Whole new system. Enjoy!”

“Wait! Don't leave me with these people, God! You take 'em back!“

But it was too late. God was gone.

WHEN I'll SUPPORT LIBERTARIANS AND REAGANITES

When people who are now racists or who bully women or who are religious bigots will definitely and surely cease to consider discriminating on the basis of race or gender or religion in business or in the provision of housing.

And it's probably best that criminals stop hurting people and stealing, and that the rest of the world takes a pledge we know we can rely on never to become aggressive. And when businesses stop polluting, all on their own.

As soon as those things happen I'll be a Libertarian because minimizing government, as an idea, sounds good.

ANOTHER REASON TICKETMASTER TOTALLY SUCKS

They sell your email address.

 made the mistake of buying some concert tickets via ticketmaster online a few months back. Apparently buried in the seething wordage of the “I agree“ contract they make you click on before they take their egregious fee, is an agreement to let them do as they please with your email address. I didn't see that part. But it must've been there--and I've heard that's exactly what they do. I don't post my email address, for fear of spam, and until I bought those tickets I got no spam.

Now I get spam all the time, from companies that claim they're sending ads within the limits of the law, and who offer you an out, you can clink on a link and fill out a form taking you off their mailing list “after seven business days“...only, not really. Apparently you only get off the mailing list for the individual franchise trying to sell you insurance or airline discount tickets or whatever. But the company that Ticketmaster sold the email address to, mine along with thousands of others, simply sells the list to another franchise. The spams haven't stopped, no matter how many forms I fill out.

Ticketmaster is ruthless, greedy--and this misuse of our email addresses is underhanded. Despite the considerable inconvenience--I don't live anywhere near the box office--I'll never buy from them again. If you plan to buy from Ticketmaster online...buyer beware.

Of spam.

THEY DON'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT THEIR COMMERCIAL MEANS

People work for long periods of time on films and commercials and yet they often don't know what their imagery really conveys. The latest most obvious example is a TV (and probably internet too) commercial for BMW. In a spectacular demonstration of CGI animation, a car is seen to sprout from an oily black blot; the oily black blot stretches out, extends into the frame of a car, tentacle-like pseudopods forming the steering wheel and engine, organically, in seconds. I suppose what they're trying to convey is something to do with the car's “organic“ wholeness; also they're simply using startling images to get you to watch so you'll see that BMW logo at the end. So that logo will be duly imprinted on your brain.

But it doesn't seem to occur to the commercial's designers that the imagery is actually very negative, slightly repulsive, and suggestive of a system that runs on petroleum--at a time when everyone is concerned about conservation. The animation shows a black oil-like material (they probably weren't thinking of petroleum but that's exactly what it looks like) forming the car, in fast-action mechanical growth spurt. And the shape of the growth, before it becomes a car, is repulsive, Lovecraftian, Cthuluesque, like something from the slime on the deepest trenches of the sea rather than some superb example of engineering. It has the appearance of something monstrous.

The image conveys what the commercial's designers apprehend unconsciously: that our automotive lifestyle is a monster; that petroleum--a pollutant--is pervasive, controlling, ubiquitous. That the oil companies are fundamental to the Machine.

hat something hideous and rapaciously consuming underlies the mechanism of society...

THE TICKING OF THE WORLD'S CLOCK

We are indebted to Logan Murphy at CROOKSANDLIARS.com for the following:

Constituents called Rep. Peter DeFazio’s office, worried there was a conspiracy buried in the classified portion of a White House plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack.

As a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure “bubbleroom” in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the secret documents.

On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED.

“I just can’t believe they’re going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack,” DeFazio said. Read more…

What are they hiding? I posted about this Presidential Directive in May, Bush Wants Full Control Of Government During Catastrophic Attack, which garnered a lot of discussion — it now appears the White House is attempting to block Congressional review of that directive. Contact your representatives in the House and Senate to let them know your thoughts on this. As I’ve mentioned before, please remind them (politely) that Congress is a coequal branch of our government and that President Bush is a public servant and therefore accountable to the people HE SERVES.

CONSERVATIVES ARE SCARED DICTATORSHIP PLANNED BY BUSH

The following is all snipped from THE RAW STORY

Thom Hartmann began his program on Thursday by reading from a new Executive Order which allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies.

He then introduced old-line conservative Paul Craig Roberts -- a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan who has recently become known for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War -- by quoting the "strong words" which open Roberts' latest column: "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."

"I don't actually think they're very strong," said Roberts of his words. "I get a lot of flak that they're understated and the situation is worse than I say. ... When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] ... there's no check to it. It doesn't have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. ... The American people don't really understand the danger that they face."

Roberts said that because of Bush's unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why "the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush's follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year's election."

However, Roberts emphasized, "the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling." Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. "Something's in the works," he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.

"The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," Roberts continued. "Chertoff has predicted them. ... The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. ... You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda's not going to do it, it's going to be orchestrated. ... The Republicans are praying for another 9/11."

BUSH'S APOCALYPSE

The truthout.org article quoted here, from a piece at truthout.org, suggests with robust reasoning, that George W. Bush is thinking about doing his part in starting what he thinks of as Armageddon and what saner people think of as World War Three. The meeting with Dobson is especially worrisome:

President George W. Bush has become dangerously steeped in ideas of Armageddon, the Apocalypse, an imminent war with Satanic forces in the Middle East, and an urgency to construct an American theocracy to fulfill God's end-of-days plan, according to close observers.

THE WORLD IS SHRIVELING!

NATURAL WORLD HALF GONE: MORE THAN HALF OF FISH, HALF THE BIRDS, HALF THE CORAL, HALF THE BEES

We've halved our most important natural resources. It's as if the world itself--the biosphere itself--has shrunk by half. As if the world is shrinking around us--but all the while, our population is growing. It's like being in a rubber boat that is losing air even as it picks up more and more people. Let's look at the list: Coral Reefs, songbirds, honeybees, fish:

1) Coral reefs dying. Rows of coral reefs generate billions of dollars a year in tourism spending. But pollution, warming waters from climate change, commercial fishing, development and ship groundings are jeopardizing them. Scientists warn that up to half of the world’s coral reefs could disappear by 2045. The reefs serve as breeding grounds for many commercial fisheries, so without them, an important food source for humans could be lost.

2) Songbirds dying out. “The dramatic decline in songbird populations is a crisis that’s unfolding worldwide, writes York University Professor of biology Bridget Stutchbury [in her new book SILENCE OF THE SONGBIRDS]. While this change may not at first appear as dangerous as global warming, the ozone hole, overpopulation, increasing pollution or massive deforestation, once again, birds — like the canaries used long ago to alert miners of invisible, fatal underground gases where they worked — have become universal biological indicators of rapidly worsening, urgent environmental troubles.

“Some estimates set the songbird population loss during the past four decades alone at almost half. Why should we care? Because, Stutchbury explains, “Their jobs as pollinators, fruit-eaters, insect-eaters, scavengers, and nutrient recyclers will not get done, and this will disrupt ecosystems and affect everyone on the planet.”

3) Honeybees going. Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation’s honeybees could have a devastating effect on America’s dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

Honeybees don’t just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.

4) Big fish in ocean--almost GONE! Brian Skerry knows the ocean well. A diver for thirty years, and a photographer for 28, he’s spent decades documenting the magnificence of the sea and its creatures. But over as the years, as man perfected the hunt for fish and pollution poisoned the world’s waters, he began to notice a major decline in the wildlife that once flourished in the sea. His concerns were confirmed by science when he read a study showing 90 percent of the big fish in the ocean were gone.

“I was just blown away by that statistic,” said Skerry, who spearheaded a three-year effort to capture the global fisheries crisis, featured in the April edition of National Geographic. “I felt that it wasn’t on anybody’s radar. So I proposed a story on overfishing, but from an underwater perspective.” …What he found was sobering.

Nearly one billion people around the world, mainly poor, rely on fish as their only source of protein. A 2004 U.N. assessment says nearly a third of the world’s fish stocks are overfished. As this resource diminishes, these people will have to find another way to eat.

THE WORLD IS SHRIVELING.

New Creation Museum makes a Joke…of Logic

A lot of people are chuckling over the new "Creation Museum", opening today near Cincinnati. The museum claims to explain Creationism, which holds that the world is just 6000 years old, and the story of creation in Genesis is literally true. .

Those amusing Creationists. It's all just a joke, is it? Here's a quote from the AP story: "Adam and Eve fall from grace and Noah survives an epic flood at a new museum that tells the Bible's version of history on a theme-park scale. But the scene near the front lobby might stop a puzzled paleontologist in his tracks: a pair of ancient children frolic just a few feet away from a group of friendly dinosaurs."

It is to laugh, no? No. It's too sad to laugh at. Is racism a joke too? Racism, like Creationism, is based on pseudo-science: it tries to justify itself with fact-challenged notions of eugenics, mis-readings of genetics, garbled statistics. It uses its warped “logic” to justify genocide.

But how is Creationism like racism? They're both destructive—and in both cases it is a destructiveness that thrives on ignorance. Fundamentalism needs a literal interpretation of the Bible to sustain its house-of-cards version of reality. Creationism is part of the ideological net (in Janov's phrase, describing cultism) that keeps people caught up in the web of fundamentalism, which is inherently intolerant, and which is used to justify hate crimes. Christian fundamentalism--which depends on creationist ideas-- foments hatred for gays, and non-Christians; and since it's opposed to scientific rationalism, and is in league with the Republican power-base, most creationists are dismissive of environmentalism and issues like global warming. Many of them actively attempt to "debunk" global warming. That encourages the President, who came to power with the help of Fundamentalist Christians, to drag his heels on controlling greenhouse emissions; it encourages the administration to permit more coal-burning facilities to be built. It encourages egregious damage to the planet.

Creationism, then, is as destructive as racism…

Here's the executive director of the California Academy of Sciences, Gregory Farrington, on the Creation museum (excerpted from his op-ed piece at sfgate.com) :

Of course, the creation story in Genesis is not the same as the Greek and Hindu stories, or as the 50 or so other tales of the mystery of creation. Each claims to explain the origin of the world, but they all are different. Was the world created in one way in Kansas and another in the middle of India? ...

Religions resolve this dilemma through the power of faith. . .Science takes a very different approach. Rather than starting with the "answer" -- in this case, its own story of creation -- science starts with verifiable observations of the natural world and builds its theory on them. . .According to the best and most accurate scientific model we have today, life on Earth is billions of years, not 6,000 years, old; and the Earth is even older; and Darwin's concepts of evolution provide the best explanation of how life has changed over time, and continues to change.

On the other hand, if new evidence were to come to light tomorrow that refuted current views of evolution and the notion of a 4.6 billion-year-old Earth, then the scientists at the California Academy of Sciences and other science-based institutions would be the first to modify their theory of creation. The story would change, not the facts.

That's the key difference between the scientific and religious journeys toward truth.

Fetal “Programming“ Dooms Millions of Children to Sickness and Death

Anti-abortion religious conservatives are very concerned about the safety of a fetus–unless you bring up industrial and agribusiness toxins, then many of them suddenly don’t care about the safety of the fetus.

In league with big business and the GOP, they’re for saving fetuses unless fetal safety involves costing industry money. I have a friend who says that environmentalists are part of a conspiracy to “scare us“ because scaring us is big lucrative, supposedly. He says he's a skeptic. But he's only skeptical about environmental claims--not about claims that our environment is safe and no real regulation is needed come from people with close ideological and business alliances with big business, people like John Stossel and Rush Limbaugh. He never questions those sources; never researches the sources of their claims. His skepticism goes only one way. And meanwhile industrial, plastics and agribusiness toxins put the unborn at risk:

From the Los Angeles Times: In a strongly worded declaration, many of the world’s leading environmental scientists warned Thursday that exposure to common chemicals makes babies more likely to develop an array of health problems later in life, including diabetes, attention deficit disorders, prostate cancer, fertility problems, thyroid disorders and even obesity.